Judge presses for a number to fill school funding gap

Updated 8:44 pm, Tuesday, November 20, 2012

AUSTIN — Judge John Dietz has heard a steady hum of witness testimony about inadequate and inequitable public school funding system in the state's ongoing school finance trial that continued this week.

On Tuesday, the veteran judge pressed a South Texas superintendent to put a number on the dearth.

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After a short pause, the superintendant said, “We need to meet at least halfway.”

Cortez said the La Feria school district — about 45 minutes northwest of Brownsville, in the Rio Grande Valley — lost nearly 8 percent of its budget, or $3 million, when Texas lawmakers cut $5.4 billion from public education last year.

“We ought to get at least what was taken away and little bit more for us to improve,” Cortez said.

Dietz, reminding Cortez that he had sworn to tell the truth, asked: “Is this pie in the sky or is this what you really, really need?”

“We need to first make the system whole because we are not whole,” Cortez said. “And then we need some extra help if we are to reach the higher standards.”

None of La Feria's 266 English-language learners passed the new STAAR English Reading 1 test; 90 percent of the district's low-income students did not pass the English Language 1 test.

“Maybe we, as a state, have been satisfied with mediocrity. Maybe through our testing and accountability, we have been kind of pushing people through the education factory,” Dietz said. “Maybe this — with the increased rigor — is an attempt to reach reality.

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Dietz asked the La Feria superintendent to respond.

“We don't have a problem getting kids to that level. We just need the resources to be able to do it,” Cortez told the judge.

More than 600 school districts are involved in the litigation as are groups representing Texas charter schools. The trial is expected to continue into January.

Later in the day, Brownwood ISD Superintendent Reece Blincoe said his district adopted a deficit budget this school year.

“We are struggling to make ends meet. We have been lucky to get grants just to get by,” Blincoe said.

The Brownwood educator warned that many Texas high school students will be unable to pass the 15 end-of-course exams. Some ninth-grade students who failed tests last spring now face the challenge of having to pass them — in addition to their 10th-grade course exams.

“We're fix'n to see things in this state that we have never seen before. We're fix'n to have a train wreck,” Blincoe testified and predicted dropout rates will increase as students can't see a path to graduation.